CIPHR Blog

Here’s our favourite CIPHR blog articles from 2014. It’s been a great year for us and we look forward to 2015!

It’s been a busy year for the CIPHR blog and with so many articles to choose from the list became bigger than expected. With articles from offboarding, to using LinkedIn, to finding a new career, we think we got everything covered!

We all want to work in a happy, productive and rewarding environment. We all want to get up and be happy to go to work, every day. Company culture is a vital ingredient to achieving true employee happiness, wellbeing, productivity and engagement, if your culture doesn’t encourage and reward these values then you need to change, today. If your employees aren’t happy where they are, then they’ll look elsewhere and be less productive in the process. Getting your culture right is something that you should be doing asap, here’s how…

Influence is a popular word and subject online, and with good reason. Being an influencer in your field of expertise is what most individuals and brands are striving for, through their online marketing and social media campaigns. Influencers can change the fortunes of brands, start the viral ball rolling or damage reputations with one update, share, like or +1. But what about the equally important skills of influencing others offline?

We all know that LinkedIn is the most popular online professional network, and its potential if utilised correctly. Creating an effective, well-connected (which doesn’t necessarily mean large) profile can lead to new connections, an improved personal brand or even a new career. Making mistakes or trying to game the system can have the complete opposite effect and leave you out in the virtual cold. Here’s some do’s and don’t’s of LinkedIn etiquette.

Twitter has many great benefits for any brand, whether you’re carrying out social recruitment, engaging with customers, increasing sales leads, offering support or all of the above. From catching up with the latest industry news to seeing what your competition is doing or tweeting about, it’s a great resource to include in your social strategy. If you’re happy to use Twitter purely as a source of information, then there are some tips in this article for you. If you’re trying to increase your Twitter following and engagement, then there’s also some useful information for you. I’ve tried to keep the below as acute and time efficient as possible, I appreciate that we’re all busy people.

It’s estimated that within the next decade, approximately 60% of UK workers will regularly work remotely. This is largely due to technological advances and how we communicate, collaborate and carry out our day to day activities using online resources. It’s also becoming more normal for employees to work from home (or other out-of-office location) and employers are more open to this way of working. There are some considerations that employers should take into account when allowing staff to work remotely.

There are many benefits to a healthy working environment, including increased productivity, happier employees, reduced absence and general wellness. Adopting as many of the following suggestions as you can will improve your day and that of your colleagues. Your boss will be happy too, due to the happier, healthier environment you have created.

Imagine being able to get anything you wanted or needed in your professional life. From landing sales and acquiring new customers, to a pay rise or promotion, your power of persuasion plays a large part in what result you get. We all use persuasion in our professional lives, to varying degrees, pretty much every day. Some people are naturally persuasive and are easily able to steer a strategy or conversation in a certain way, that suits them. Others find convincing others a little more difficult. There are a number of techniques that can be used to improve your powers or persuasion and increase your influence with your colleagues, managers, customers and contacts.

Most of us hate our commute to work. We’re packed into trains like cattle, wondering why we do it every day and assuming it’s wasted time. If your daily commute is an hour each way, over your lifetime you’ll spend roughly 2.5 years travelling to and from the office. Here are some suggestions for making this time more productive, beneficial, healthier and just a bit more interesting.

The office, whether at home or at your employer’s place of business, is a dangerous place – full of unnoticed health risks that should be avoided. If you don’t realise these dangers and act to do something to address them, then you may inadvertently be harming yourself every time you’re sat at your desk or in the working environment. Below are some of the usual suspects and what you can do about them.

Onboarding’s a journey that both a new employee and an employer take to reach their individual goals. The employee’s goal is to learn about their role, the company and their future colleagues. The employer’s goal is to prepare and induct the employee, making sure that they have everything they need. This ensures they’re well prepared, fit the company culture and become a productive member of staff as quickly as possible. Getting the process right is vital for both parties.

Many employers have traditionally seen working from home as a hindrance to productivity and an excuse for employees to slack off and get away with not doing much work. The truth is, however, that flexible working and telecommuting are a required element of modern working. There are far more advantages to telecommuting than disadvantages and businesses not embracing it as part of their strategy are likely to suffer as a result. Here are just some of the benefits of telecommuting.

When was the last time you asked yourself the question “what makes me stand out”?

Whether you’re looking for a new job, going for a promotion or trying to make a sale, this question is one that will tell you a lot – and you may find you don’t always like the answer. Standing out from the crowd and offering something unique is the difference between advancement and remaining static, in pretty much anything we do.

While researching this subject I read a number of articles that seemed to assume that unmotivated employees are lazy or a ‘bad hire’, this is certainly NOT always the case. Even the best hires can become demotivated due to many influences and, just because an employee isn’t feeling 100% motivated, it doesn’t mean that they’re lazy. In both cases however, leaders need to be aware of the signs and be in a position to assist and re-energise an employee. Not dealing with the situation can lead to a more widespread problem, loss of revenue and productivity.

As a leader, creating a happy, healthy and engaged workforce is a sure-fire way to increase motivation, productivity, creativity and collaboration. It also produces a host of additional benefits that will improve the working environment itself for all employees, your employer brand and how your company is perceived by existing and potential customers. When there are strategies available to achieve this that cost nothing at all, why would any business not use them?!

Remembering every stage of a process, and all the little tasks that go with each stage, is not always easy. Recruitment and onboarding campaigns contain many different elements and areas that require planning, interaction and careful consideration. To help you with your recruiting and onboarding campaigns, we’ve created a free useful infographic.

There’s a video on YouTube that simply dares you to watch it to the end. It doesn’t contain anything horrible, just a man talking about our ability to simply sit and concentrate on 3 minutes of content, without distraction. During the video there are mentions of the things that many of us are distracted by, including emails and Twitter. Watching this video I started to think of how much of our working day is taken up by distraction, and how we can combat it.

Since June 30th 2014, all employees have the legal right to request flexible working from their employer. This request must be dealt with in a reasonable way by the employer, the advantages and disadvantages being considered and discussed. As an employer, your first impression may automatically be a negative one, but this shouldn’t be the case, as there are many advantages to flexible working for both the employee and business.

Meeting, discussing and planning a project or team task is all very well, but how productive are these discussions? In some cases, brainstorming, mind-melding or whatever phrase is used for simply talking to each other, actually delays the tasks that are needed to complete what needs to be done. Here are 5 ways that you and your team can supercharge your project planning and get on with what’s important.

A company’s greatest asset is its employees, the HUMANS that work every day to drive the business forward. As such, human resources professionals are those best qualified to manage, strategise and advise on best practices, where human capital is concerned. But how can HR gain the influence within the business that they deserve?

Even in the happiest of offices there are those days where morale may dip a little. Luckily, there are certain things that management and leaders can do to raise spirits and help prevent the office atmosphere from affecting productivity, engagement and the general wellbeing of your employees.

With Shark Week under way, we thought it would be fun to think of how shark safety can guide you in the office environment. Many of the shark safety guidelines detailed by National Geographic can be translated into good practices for any career-minded individual.

Attracting and recruiting the right talent for your business is an ongoing challenge that many brands invest heavily in. If you get smart and catch the right talent then these investments are rewarded with employees that drive the business forward to new successes. Maintaining a strong employer brand, optimising the recruitment processes and ensuring that talent stays with your company are all top of recruitment and HR departments priorities (or should be).

Offboarding’s an extremely important part of the employee life cycle, yet many brands ignore this process. Here’s why you should care about offboarding, a lot.

Just as onboarding is the process by which a company ensures that a new starter is integrated into the business culture as efficiently as possible, offboarding should be used to ensure that an employee leaves the business in the best way. There are a number of reasons why it’s important for brands to invest time and effort into their offboarding process.

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How much time and effort do businesses put into ensuring their employees sing its brand’s praises? Here’s 5 reasons you should care about employee advocacy.

A brand advocate is typically described as “a customer who has been officially commissioned to speak on behalf of your brand without compensation”. It doesn’t have to be a customer however, and can just as easily be any one of a brand’s employees. Happy and engaged employees provide free advertising, reduce recruitment costs and improve your employer brand, for free, as well as offering many other benefits.

The two faces of social media in the workplace require policing and careful thought by HR and leaders alike. It’s proved to be of huge benefit to businesses when used correctly, but also the bane of HR departments when abused.

In an age where there’s an app for everything and telecommuting should be easy, why do workers still not feel it’s beneficial? It begs the question, “are your employees cut out to work remotely?”.

In a survey of business owners by Virgin Media Business, it was predicted that 60% of office-based employees will regularly work from home by 2022. A separate survey by Office Angels found that a third of employees think commuting will be unheard of by 2036. By comparison, large companies such as Yahoo are bucking this predicted trend by announcing all of its staff are required to work from the office.

As social networks evolve, and a different article each week reveals the next big thing that you should be part of, how can you keep up and know what’s best for your personal branding efforts? Fear not, here’s our guide for your personal brand strategy for 2015.

About the Author

17+ years experience in the HR technology sector spanning Software Support, Account Management and Marketing. Over a decade of writing expertise, with 800+ published articles on all aspects of professional life. Article links from such sites as The New York Times, Inc, HR.com and Huffington Post. The opinions expressed in my articles are my own and may not necessarily be those of CIPHR